More bad news for Biden.
According to a report from Fox News, the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers was shot down in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Thursday; the decision reversed a ruling by a three-judge panel of the same court that had upheld the vaccination requirement.
From Fox News:
At a rare en banc rehearing, the full court rejected the government’s argument that courts don’t have jurisdiction over pre-enforcement challenges to Biden’s vaccine mandate.
The effect of the court’s decision is to uphold a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in January 2022 that blocked the mandate. At the time, the Biden administration said nearly 98% of covered employees had already been vaccinated.
A panel of the 5th Circuit had briefly reinstated the mandate, reasoning that federal employees should have taken their complaint to administrative agencies that deal with employment issues, like the Merit Systems Protection Board or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, instead of suing in court. But the full court agreed to hear the matter en banc, which again paused the mandate’s enforcement.
Judge Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion. The full 5th Circuit concluded that federal employees could take their case to court because they were challenging Biden’s authority on constitutional grounds. The court upheld the preliminary injunction blocking the vaccine mandate and now the federal employees’ case will proceed in district court.
“We hasten to emphasize that this case only involves a preliminary injunction. The preliminary injunction’s purpose is to maintain the status quo until the parties have the chance to adjudicate the merits,” Oldham wrote.
“When the parties proceed to the merits in the district court, the plaintiffs will have to prove that whatever injunction they request is broad enough to protect against their proven injuries and no broader. And the Government will have another chance to show that any permanent injunction should be narrower than the preliminary one. And both sides will have to grapple with the White House’s announcement that the COVID emergency will finally end on May 11, 2023,” the court said.
More over at Fox News:
Federal court rejects Biden vaccine mandate for federal workers https://t.co/RfWjeLc5lL
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) March 24, 2023
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